Godfrey of Viterbo was a notable classical scholar, of either German or Italian birth. He was chaplain to the German king Conrad III, and secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, acting as his ambassador on several occasions. His works were mainly composed during his travels, and he freely combined different types of text, both sacred and secular, from historical and narrative sources.

The present work, Pantheon, is a development from an earlier work Speculum regum – mirror of kings – written to justify Frederick Barbarossa;s second son Henry’s position on the German throne by tracing a relationship back to Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor (Henry was to become Holy Roman Emperor himself in 1194). This was revised into Memoria seculorum, a history of the world from the creation to 1185. This was revised again in 1187 to become Pantheon. It was very popular with medieval historians and manuscript copies were widely circulated. This is a copy of the first printed edition, published in 1559.